Growing Together

Shared Roots

Established in 2017, Atsiniki Cigars continues the traditions of growing, curing and sharing fine tobacco, honoring the connections born of these rituals. Our cigars are proof that the relationships we cultivate can change our lives forever, creating new ways to positively impact others as we grow.

Common Ground

Atsiniki cigars celebrate the time-honored traditions of Native American, Cuban and Nicaraguan tobacco culture. While each culture is unique, through Atsiniki they share common ground, offering an opportunity to bring premium Nicaraguan cigars — and the stories of their own indigenous people — to the world.

Charles Robinson

Founder & Atsiniki Himself

Franklin, Tennessee

Throughout his life, Charles Robinson has shared truths about his Choctaw Native American heritage to preserve the history of his culture. While visiting his wife's Blackfoot tribe in Alberta, Canada, Charles was gifted with the ceremonial name Atsiniki, meaning Storyteller. Years later, Charles was speaking of tobacco’s significance within his culture — an offering or gift, a shared breath showing respect for another’s point of view, the smoke rising like prayers to the Creator. The telling of his story revealed a friend’s shared reverence for tobacco, rooted in Cuban and Nicaraguan cigar culture. Common ground led to deeper friendships and the collaborative creation of Atsiniki Cigars.

Arsenio Ramos

Original Master Blender

Pinar del Río, Cuba

Arsenio is humble, despite renowned industry status as one of the greats. He remembers walking tobacco fields, a young boy alongside his Father, doing simple jobs, earning more responsibility over time. He’s taste-tested cigars since age ten, and is a third-generation tobacco expert who witnessed firsthand the Cuban cigar industry’s evolution surrounding the 1960’s embargo. He knows tobacco science like no other, field to flavor, a hotspring of insights about balanced soil, leaf characteristics, blending formulas and ratios — priceless know-how, all colored by his Cuban cigar-making ancestry. We are honored to call Arsenio Ramos a friend and Master Blender for Atsiniki. Without him, our story would be incomplete.

Eradio Pichardo

Estelí Operations

Estelí, Nicaragua

Eradio is fascinated with tobacco. A third generation tobacco farmer and agriculturist, he eventually started blending and managing a cigar factory in order to grow his skills beyond the fields. The hardest part of the business? Creating new, original blends, the challenge and passion that best suits Eradio’s spirit. A happily married father of three, Eradio sees his work with Atsiniki and with Arsenio Ramos — his friend and former colleague of nearly 18 years — as an opportunity to impart his legacy as a Master Blender and create something for the world to enjoy.

You can know all the science, but if you’re not honoring your culture, you have nothing.

-Arsenio Ramos, Original Master Blender

Cuban Tradition

After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the Estelí region became a refuge for Cuban cigar makers. They took with them not only the tobacco seeds that once produced their world-renowned quality tobacco, but also generations-worth of tobacco cultivating and premium cigar making experience. Our Master Blender hails from the Pinar del Río Province in western Cuba, widely viewed as the Napa Valley of the cigar industry. The tobacco we now cultivate in Nicaragua can trace its roots back to Santa Maria and San Luis, Cuba.